August was a journey in itself. My brain cracked a few times, but I did my best to take care of myself. Twice I had a good cry, one of which happened lying on the floor. My boyfriend silently lied down next to me, and from that gesture alone, I knew everything would be fine. And it was. It is. For the past week or so, I've been feeling particularly inspired, motivated, and creative.

This month I read a lot. I started making face masks a weekly practice. I didn't pressure myself about money. I had multiple dreams that Donald Trump was trying to kill me. I said yes to things. To a lot of things. I said yes to a trip to a flea market an hour away; to drinks with a friend on a weeknight so we could catch up; to biking in the city; to getting up at 7 in the morning on a Saturday to accomplish adult things because I knew I had to even if I didn't want to; to a 24-hour adventure race in Chicago, possibly the craziest thing I've ever done.

My reading focus this month was on non-fiction since I hadn't read any since December (!!). Full disclosure: I threw a fiction one in there too because I can't stay away, but three out of four were non, so that still counts for something.

I sometimes forget that "non-fiction" doesn't necessarily mean "historical fiction." There's more out there. Memoirs, for example. Powerful and inspiring memoirs. I loved and recommend all three that I read.

I finished Emma Gannon's "Ctrl Alt Delete: How I Grew Up Online" this past weekend (read it within a week) (because that's what five-hour drives are good for) and loved it so much that I wanted it to shine in its own spotlight. There's too much I want to say about it for it to be grouped in with my monthly reads.

I recently had a conversation with a friend about passion, in the sense of feeling passionate about doing certain things.

"I can't really make myself less boring if I have no passions," she said.

She recalled a conversation she had with her grandma, who wondered, "What is passion and how does someone find one? Is it even really possible?" The two of them agreed that it wasn't. You couldn't just go out and "find" a passion. Instead, passion was something inherent to you, something rooted in you.

If you ask me? I disagree. I don't think you're either born with a passion or you're not, and that if you don't have an innate passion for something now, you never will. That's depressing. Passions stem from interests, and your interests evolve.

(Though they do have a point – you can't go out and find passion. It finds you.)

Timing is important. So much of life depends on it. Showing up to places on time, scheduling appointments, getting enough sleep. Less evident but much more significant: people must enter our lives at the right time.

Unfortunately, there's no way for us to know when that is. If there was, I would have told you, "You seem great and I'd love to hang out, but the stars aren't quite aligned for that yet. It wouldn't work out in the long run. Let's pick this up in a few years. It'll work much better then."